Page 39 of Stolen By the Rogue
He followed her out of the attic and down the creaky stairs to the kitchen. If she was going to have to relive some of the most painful moments of her life, Jane was certainly not going to do it on an empty stomach.
She took up her usual spot at the kitchen table and George sat in the chair opposite. It was funny how quickly they had settled into the routine of playing at being an old married couple.
“Well, you know our ship ran aground just off the coast of Malta and I was the only member of my family to survive. What I haven’t told you was what my life was like in the intervening years between then and my return to England,” she said.
George shuffled about in his seat. “Before you go on, I need you to understand why this all matters to me. I know you had a life before me, and we haven’t been together very long, but I want to understand the sort of man who could possibly love a woman such as you and not be able to keep her.”
Oh, the irony. If only it had been that way.
Jane closed her eyes for a moment, letting her mind wander into the hidden recesses where she had carefully tucked away the recollections of her first love. She sighed at the bitter-sweet memories. “His name was Pietro. And he was the most beautiful man I have ever met. You usually only see men such as him in paintings by the old Renaissance masters.”
There was no point in trying to tell George anything but the truth. Pietro, with his long black hair and Mediterranean sun-kissed face, had been the mortal personification of an ancient Greek god. No girl in the town of Sliema had been immune to his siren’s lure. Even Jane, while still in the depths of her grief, had found herself drawn to him.
George’s hardened face told her all she needed to know about what he thought of Pietro. Her former Maltese lover should have been thanking his lucky stars he was some eighteen hundred miles away.
Her gaze dropped to George’s tightly held fists.
I expect if you could get hold of Pietro you might do him some harm.
Not that she would stop him. Lord knew her duplicitous former lover deserved a good thrashing. “But beauty isn’t everything. Especially when you have a cold heart,” she added.
“What did he do?”
It was more what he didn’t do that had given Jane cause for great despair, many nights of tears, and her eventual departure from Malta. “He married someone else. A local girl he barely knew, but whom he had been betrothed to since a young boy. An arrangement he hadn’t seen fit to share with me. During summer last year, their families moved ahead with wedding preparations, and the first I knew about their impending marriage was when it was announced by the priest at Sunday mass. You can imagine how well I received that piece of news.”
The heart-breaking agony of being tossed aside by a man she had given herself to over the course of many months had only been exacerbated by the discovery that many people had known that she and Pietro were secret lovers. Public humiliation was a sharp and unpleasant pill to swallow. The whispers and looks of pity whenever she went to the village market remained painfully in Jane’s memories long after she had boarded the ship back to England.
“He sounds like a complete blackguard who didn’t deserve you,” replied George.
She blinked away a tear. Even now, after all this time, those words still felt hollow. Yes, Pietro was a lying bastard who had betrayed her. But she had loved him, been prepared to build a life with him on the island, to never return to England.
In the blink of an eye, her dreams of being his wife and the mother to his children had shattered to a thousand pieces, along with her heart.
“So, I packed up what was left of my pride, got on a ship, and came here.” Jane rose from the table. That was as much as she wanted to share abouthimwith George. Like her life in the Middle East, it was yet another door which she had closed firmly behind her.
She made it most of the way to the kitchen door, but he quickly got to his feet and intercepted her. Taking Jane by the arm, George pulled her roughly to him. “I swear by all that is holy that I would never do that to you. I will be true.”
“You have to forgive me if I doubt that you have ever taken a vow and kept it, George Hawkins. But at least I know the kind of man you are. With you, there is no pretense. I don’t expect you to even consider the possibility of us staying together and marrying.”
She had meant it as a kindness, as a way to release him from any foolish notions of marital obligations, but the flash of dark anger which crossed his face told her he had not taken it that way. He was outraged and offended.
“So, you have no plans to ever become my wife? You would lay with me, but not take my name?” he ground out.
When she strained against his hold, George had the good sense to let her go. Jane moved closer toward the doorway. “Let’s worry about finding Jane Whorwood’s hidden treasure. That’s all that is important at the moment. I can’t deal with any other complications in my life right now.”
She didn’t want any grand declarations of intent from George.
If they found the cache of jewels and coins which her research had led her to believe existed, they would both be in a position to make life-altering decisions. Offers of marriage were not something one should rush into making, especially when neither party was prepared to raise or discuss the topic of love.
He knows my past. Now it’s up to him to decide if he wants to be my future.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Two days later, Jane and George were sitting on the floor of the attic, silently staring at one another. There were no words for the depths of bitter disappointment which she knew he almost certainly shared with her. All they had to show for their hard work was sore muscles and bruises. Every last place they could think to look had been searched. Nothing had been found.
To top it off, they were both sporting bloodied and raw knuckles from the work of prizing the floorboards out from where they had lain for hundreds of years. George’s iron crowbar, the criminal past of which Jane didn’t wish to know, had come in handy for lifting the boards. Unfortunately, more than once, fingers had got in the way and been bashed as the heavy planks of wood dropped.
And while the previous three nights of lovemaking had been moments of shared ecstasy, today her heart and soul felt hollow.
